Moon and Its Handiwork

Prometheus interacts gravitationally with the inner flanking ringlets of the F ring, creating dark channels as it passes.

This image was taken in a complete azimuthal scan of the rings, during which Cassini followed Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) around the rings for one complete orbit, or about 14 hours.

This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 41 degrees above the ringplane. The moon is partly lit by sunlight (at left) and elsewhere lit by reflected light from Saturn.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 23, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.5 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Prometheus and at a Sun-Prometheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 152 degrees. Image scale is 9 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.